Apna ghar child abuse: Cops too involved

June 14, Chandigarh: The Punjab and Haryana High Court probe panel report on the Rohtak shelter home, Apna Ghar, has made shocking revelations. The report said that naked parade, pornography, sexual abuse and assault, forcible abortion, intoxication, starvation and forced labour were done to the inmates.

The report also says that about 101 inmates of the home were subjected to various forms of abuse. The shelter home inmates were used as construction labourers.

The victims were abused by cops, outsiders, and others; were told to garland the men they went out with; and made to undergo abortions by “inserting foreign objects in private parts”.

On Holi, colour was put on their private parts; and their children were sold off in the garb of abortion. The victims were kept naked for “long periods” and photographed. They were even forced to perform yoga – naked. Some “elderly girls” were taken away at night for dancing and immoral purposes. Children as young as five complained of “perverse sexual abuse in form of oral sex”.

According to the report, submitted by two members of a commission appointed by the high court, caretaker Jaswanti Devi, her relatives, outsiders and also policemen indulged in abuse and torture. The commission members Anil Malhotra and Sudeepti Sharma have recommended handing over of the case to an independent agency such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI).

For the enquiry, the commission members visited twelve centers.

At Bal Kunj, Chhachhroli, in Yamunanagar, 12 children, shifted from the shelter Apna Ghar in Rohtak narrated tales of being “physically abused, brutally beaten, often kept naked, made to consume liquor and regularly work as farm labourers by Jaswanti, who ran Apna Ghar”.

They were made to go without food for two to three days, forced to sweep the premises, wash utensils and do other menial work”. Two “elderly” girls complained that they were taken to hotel rooms where policemen used to “sexually abuse them, which was repulsive, painful and agonising”.

Things were hardly any better at Nari Niketan in Karnal. Five girls there alleged they were “sexually molested” and “made to suffer abortions by giving tablets and inserting foreign objects into private parts”.

The women complained of sexual molestation at the hands of Jaswanti’s son-in-law Jai Bhagwan, driver Satish, policemen and other outsiders.

The boys, on birth, were “sold to people in the garb of adoption”. Girls were reared for ultimately using them for immoral purposes.

At Swadhar Shelter Home in Gurgaon, the victims said they were forced to consume liquor before sex. They were photographed naked and “Satish, Jai Bhagwan and the police used to have sex with them. Jai Bhagwan and Satish videographed each other while doing sex.”

At Sahara Ashram in Rohtak, 35-year-old inconsolable Ramwati said Jaswanti inserted scissors into her private parts after she complained of her baby being sold off.

As the report was placed before a vacation Bench, the High Court questioned the rationale behind filing the report without taking the other two members of the committee into confidence.

The vacation Bench headed by Justice LN Mittal also asked one of the members about what the “tearing hurry” was as the deadline given by the high court to submit the report was July 11.

Posted by Preeti
on Thursday, June 14th, 2012. Filed under Chandigarh, India News.
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